Firstly, thanks OP for this guide. I put one together a long time ago that is now quite obsoolete, so I know first-hand how much work it takes to do this. I'll just add a quick tip. If you have a new companion at level 1, and don't know what their favorite gift is, take them to fleet, go to the lowest level gift vendor and sort by price to organize his wares a bit. Then with that companion active, if you hover the cursor over each level 1 gift, it will say "no influence" or occassionally "small influence" for all but one, and that one that reads "large influence" will be the class of gift you are looking for. There are a couple companions that favor multiple gifts, but only the ones that give max points will show this way. Beats having to keep or decipher a chart.

Sounds like a conflict. If you aren't using the on-board sound card on your mother board, be sure to disable it. Also, if you have a sound card, but the sound is being run through your video card, disable the sound card also. (Not many new computers have separate sound cards these days). You want your primary sound source to be the only one enabled. USB headphones act as another separate sound card via software when they are plugged in, and conflicts there can be a little trickier, but not near the pain in the keister they used to be. Depending on your system, you may have to disable on-board sound for the motherboard in BIOS, the other can be disabled in device manager. Plenty of guides online. Edit to add: I also don't let my screen go to sleep, I have found that the "power saver" settings save very little power, if any, and cause more issues than they are worth. Speaking of a desktop system of course, but on laptops, you can choose to have them disabled if the laptop is plugged in, as you aren't going to have to worry about conserving battery life.

Quick "cheat" I use all the time for new computers or putting a game back on my system from an archive. 1. Run the installer, and let it do it's initial thing if the game isn't a re-install and doesn't already have it's registry entries, etc. 2. Stop the download, copy all the old files into the file folder. Then let it update instead of downloading everything from scratch. 3. I then do a "repair" or "verify" (depending on the game, they all do it a little differently). to make sure there aren't any missed or corrupted files. If this is just a re-install, I skip step 1 and just transfer files, then create a desktop shortcut. For a new computer, my old hard drive gets installed as a secondary drive, so the transfer goes rather quickly, and the old drive becomes an archive, as it will have everything from my old computer on it. I also keep a data drive for all my pictures, videos etc. that gets transferred to the new computer (plus the usual backups for anything I value) It is quite possible to run games from the old drive once the registry entries are in place, and some games don't even need the registry entries. But I prefer to keep an archive to make it easy to remove games if I no longer play them and keep my main drive tidy. Some games are also hard coded to look for files on C: so it's easier to just move them than to change pointers, etc. I used to just clone the old drive, and give Windows the new credentials to activate it if needed, but Win 10 does things differently now, and requires an install to check chip ID's etc. so it isn't nearly as practical as it used to be.

That's the right order. Corrosive grenade spreads both dots when AA tactical is in play so pre-loading both before CG is the way to go for max dot damage. Then alternate between cull>takedown and lethal shot spam (2-3 shots depending on your alacrity rating) for max AOE on targets within range of the boss, or just spam lethal shot for general AOE work with in-range targets when there is no boss. Best tactical in the game for virulence IMO. Splash damage range is the same as corrosive grenade from what I can see, so if CG hits them, lethal shot splash damage will, too. Series of shots does not trigger dots, so don't bother unless you need a timing filler or fast finisher. I also only bother with suppressive fire now when mobs are too spread out, or am just goofing off soloing a heroic. Just be aware that when the target goes down, the cast time for lethal shot is reset, so I usually pick the highest rated mob as my main target when I can to maximize shot rate. Depending on the targets, group makeup, etc. you can adjust the dot load, too, you don't always really need all dots on garbage mobs, so you can speed things up in some cases, by just going straight to CG and lethal shot, or CD>CG>LS etc. Some practice in heroics and experimentation will give you the feel for it, and speed up your runs. Also be aware of your aggro, I have pulled mass aggro off the tank, especially in PUGs where you have a tank that doesn't taunt, or adds that haven't been taunted yet, etc. It can make life "interesting"

That passive hasn't worked to prevent pulling/leaping to since I started playing the game years ago for either smuggler or sniper. It is broken, and likely never to be fixed. Hunker Down / Entrench with the right utilities is the much better, and working, option. Later on the utilities and armor set bonus will make Hunker down by far the better ability anyway.

IIRC Shae is recruitable only if you were a subscriber at the time she was rewarded. It is a choice to either use the item to have her right away, or wait to recruit her via story, but you still have to have been a subscriber in the time frame of the award. There are other companions that are similar. They did make Darth Hexid available later on via an achievement if memory serves, but that is not the case with Shae at this time. I personally don't object to these companions being made available, as those of us who received the reward have had the enjoyment of them for a while now, but it's not up to me. If she does become available again, I'd recommend getting her. I find her to be great DPS and decent at tanking, but after the companion healing nerf, she's not so good as a healer, but are any of them now?

At $20 for this expansion, that would be about $19.01 more than it's been worth. They recently admitted that they have generated over 1 Billion dollars with this game. Yet they have laid off staff, and won't even pay some kid minimum wage to sit in general chat and play whack-a-mole with the gold spammers. Increasing revenue even further won't get us a single improvement in game play or quash a single bug, it will just go into EA's pockets. I quit EQ2 after being in both EQ's from the beginning due to over priced "expansions" and other money grabs. I would leave SWTOR in a heartbeat if they charged for one. Frankly, looking at the grind to balance out my gear on my main, and the penalty I will pay in not even being able to get through a heroic without a slog due to over clamping, I am having serious doubts if I will keep playing as it is, unless some very serious changes are made, and soon. Don't even get me started on the crafting debacle.

Forget about getting a drop higher than 278 in a heroic. My main in full level 306 gear still hasn't gotten a single item above that rank in any heroic. I suspect it's to prevent you from getting any gear that can vendor for more than 800 credits, rather than to keep you from gearing up from anything other than the FP grind. But it certainly has that effect. It's not "play your way" it's "grind our way". Once you get to 306, the grind continues to get specific gear sets using fragments and credits (lots and lots of credits, which are now much slower to obtain, don't want us catching up to the whales or the cheaters too soon y'know). Don't worry, once you complete the multiple grinds, you'll be weaker in heroics and flashpoints than you were at 70 due to over-clamping, so you can do all this work to regress your character from where you were before. What a deal!

While some of it is going to depend on the particulars of the computer on client side, I agree that server side is having a good part of it as well. I run SWTOR on a flight sim capable rig (that can keep 60 FPS in DCS World multiplayer) and I am also seeing a real slow down in the new planets. They aren't becoming a slide show for me, but there is definitely a frame drop and some server delays, enough to be noticeable. Once the populations spreads back out it should improve, and the devs may want to take another pass at optimization when they get a chance, but I would think that 10+ instances running at once is the biggest part of it.

Yeah, got it sorted out. Patch notes had me looking for "Preparing the Way" not "Hearts and Minds".

Acording to the patch notes, my character, who completed Ossus a long time ago, should have a mission in their log to start the new quest line. No mission, nothing on mission terminal, no e-mail. Is there a mission terminal, other prereq, or something somewhere I have missed? Checked others who also completed Ossus, and they don't have the mission either.

Help me to understand why this seems to be such a large issue for some. I fully agree it needs to be fixed, but it seems to me that especially for scavenging nodes. you know what you are going to get before you even click on it. Unless they are mixing levels now, or something. The type and yields are pretty standardized.

Thank you! I am kicking myself for forgetting to add the other important aspect of this, which is: “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” ― Dr. Maya Angelou One should always remember that when setting the tone with their writing, speech or actions. (OK, feel better getting that in, even if a bit late.)

Not just this game, but about every game I've ever played. I make it a point to not do anything I don't want to do again, or earn anything I wouldn't want to lose until a few days after the drop, if not a week in some cases. But yeah it's just so tempting to start getting those new shinies......

I seem to recall reading in the pre-update discussion that the 228 augments stayed the same but the later augments lose most of their tertiary stats until you get back to the max level ones. It was suggested to stick with the 228 until you could get your armor levels maxed before spending the time and coin for the max level augments. Struck me as odd, but apparently is intended.